Chicago Symphony Orchestra

After years of toiling in the contemporary music trenches, David Robertson is now a regular guest conductor with major symphony orchestras and next season will start as the Saint Louis Symphony's music director. Musicians like working with him, and audiences appreciate his precision. This program of rarely heard early- to mid-20th-century pieces plays to his strengths. He and the CSO will collaborate with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in a performance of Bernstein's brief Prelude, Fugue and Riffs for clarinet and jazz combo, choreographed by Daniel Ezralow. It features the dazzling John Bruce Yeh, the orchestra's assistant principal clarinet, and should be extra fun with the dancers. Yeh will also be spotlighted in Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo, which will be followed by Stravinsky's touching memorial to Debussy, Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The program closes with Bartok's ballet The Wooden Prince. Like all his stage works, it's a creepy tale about love gone awry--in this case a princess falls in love with a wooden prince and then a real one. The enormous orchestra, with six trumpets and extra woodwinds, whips up some heady eruptions, and the work has seductive clarinet and string writing. Friday 11/5, 1:30 PM, Orchestra Hall, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, 312-294-3000 or 800-223-7114, $17-$110.

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